More About Us
Independent video production based in the Lincolnshire & Cambridgeshire region

Spare Wheel Productions is owned and operated by Claire Buckley

My broadcast television career began at Granada Television in Manchester in the 1970s.

As life's opportunity would have it, I was by chance one of four people to join Granada Television in Manchester as part of their technical training intake.

Granada Television in the 70s was awash with excitement and opportunity. Granada at that time was a pacesetter, and as UK broadcasting history now shows, a trendsetter led by Sidney and Cecil Bernstein and later by Alex Bernstein with landmark productions often eclipsing the BBC, led by Controller of Programmes, David Plowright. But later, when 'the elephants danced...' it became another matter, especially for the ants.

Investigative current-affairs productions such as World in Action I well remember during my training, spending five days with the production and technical team - often working in isolation to the rest of Granada's day-to-day operations. Major drama also such as Laurence Olivier Presents, and the twice-weekly ITV Network meat of what was called at the time, drama serial - that of Coronation Street. These were periods of broadcasting history in which I was immersed - the production and technical values of the time, which in today's media appear to have been eclipsed by the bottom line.

Later, 12 years working in Post Production, and much later again as producer for independent projects at Channel Nine Television Sydney, Australia. Other large scale productions of arena-sized proportions for BBC Radio and other events, then world-wide broadcast business development in North America, Switzerland and Germany.

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